Thursday, July 21, 2011

The next big theory in the global warming debate is about to be published. A new report indicates that the sun and its cosmic rays are responsible for the cyclical cooling and warming of Earth.

Read on for the details of the report, which will be "just the facts."

July 19, 2011

The Next Climate Debate Bombshell

bY dENNIS t. aVERY

CHURVILLE, VA—Get ready for the next big bombshell in the man-made warming debate. The world’s most sophisticated particle study laboratory—CERN in Geneva—will soon announce that more cosmic rays do, indeed, create more clouds in earth’s atmosphere. More cosmic rays mean a cooler planet. Thus, the solar source of the earth’s long, moderate 1,500-year climate cycle will finally be explained.

Cosmic rays and solar winds are interesting phenomena—but they are vastly more relevant when an undocumented theory is threatening to quadruple society’s energy costs. The IPCC wants $10 gasoline, and “soaring” electric bills to reduce earth’s temperatures by an amount too tiny to measure with most thermometers.

In 2007, when Fred Singer and I published Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years, we weren’t terribly concerned with cosmic rays. We knew the natural, moderate warming/cooling cycle was real, from the evidence in ice cores, seabed sediments, fossil pollen and cave stalagmites. The cycle was the big factor that belied the man-made warming hysteria of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

When Willi Dansgaard and Hans Oeschger discovered the 1,500 year cycle in the Greenland ice cores in 1984, they knew immediately that it was solar-powered. They’d seen exactly the same cycle in the carbon 14 molecules in trees, and in the beryllium 10 molecules in ice cores. Both sets of molecules are formed when cosmic rays strike our atmosphere. The cycle had produced a whole series of dramatic, abrupt Medieval-Warming-to-Little-Ice-Age climate changes.

The IPCC, for its part, announced that the sun could not be the forcing factor in any major climate change because the solar irradiation was too small. IPCC did not, however, add up the other solar variations that could amplify the solar irradiation. Nor had the IPCC programmed its famed computer models with the knowledge of the Medieval Warming (950–1200 AD), the Roman Warming (200 BC–600 AD), or the big Holocene Warmings centered on 6,000 and 8,000 BC.

The IPCC apparently wanted to dismiss the sun as a climate factor—to leave room for a CO2 factor that has only a 22 percent correlation with our past thermometer record. Correlation is not causation—but the lack of CO2 correlation is deadly to the IPCC theory.

Henrik Svensmark of the Danish Space Research Institute added the next chapter in the climate cycle story, just before our book was published. His cloud chamber experiment showed natural cosmic rays quickly created vast numbers of tiny “cloud seeds” when our mix of atmospheric gases was bombarded with ultra-violet light. Since clouds often cover 30 percent of the earth’s surface, a moderate change in cloud cover clearly could explain the warming/cooling cycle.

Svensmark noted the gigantic “solar wind” that expands when the sun is active—and thus blocks many of the cosmic rays that would otherwise hit the earth’s atmosphere. When the sun weakens, the solar wind shrinks. Recently, the U.S. Solar Observatory reported a very long period of “quiet sun” and predicted 30 years of cooling.

Last year, Denmark’s University of Aarhus did another experiment with a particle accelerator that fully confirmed the Svensmark hypothesis: cosmic rays help to make more clouds and thus could cool the earth.

The CERN experiment is supposed to be the big test of the Svensmark theory. It’s a tipoff, then, that CERN’s boss, Rolf-Dieter Heuer, has just told the German magazine Die Welt that he has forbidden his researchers to “interpret” the forthcoming test results. In other words, the CERN report will be a stark “just the facts” listing of the findings. Those findings must support Svensmark, or Heuer would never have issued such a stifling order on a major experiment.

Stay tuned.

DENNIS T. AVERY, a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC, is an environmental economist. He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years, Readers may write him at PO Box 202, Churchville, VA 2442, email to cgfi@hughes.net or blog on www.cgfi.org

Save the light bulb!

Will it be "lights out" for the Legacy of Thomas Edison?

Among the many foolish things the political class in Washington has foisted on an unsuspecting public in recent years was the mandated phase-out of one of the most successful inventions in human history, the incandescent light bulb.

The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, passed by a Democratic Congress and signed into law by President Bush, set in motion a scheme to phase out the incandescent light bulb, replacing it with what the public was told were “more efficient” and “climate friendly” alternatives. Those who questioned the wisdom of the move were assured that emerging technologies, specifically the Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL), would more than fill our lighting needs.

It hasn’t worked out that way. CFLs are more expensive than traditional light bulbs, less reliable as an instant and consistent source of light, and they contain potentially dangerous mercury. Dropping an incandescent light bulb on the floor is a matter of sweeping up broken glass. Break a CFL and you risk contaminating your home and clothes with mercury. Furthermore, the Washington Post recently reported that GE is closing its last remaining incandescent light bulb factory, located in Winchester, Virginia. CFLs can be produced cheaper in China than they can in the U.S., and that’s where the new green jobs are expected to go.

Some members of Congress are finally waking up to the folly their colleagues committed three years ago. Representatives Joe Barton (R-Texas), Michael Burgess (R-Texas), and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) introduced a bill – the Better Use of Light Bulbs Act (BULB) -- in early September that would repeal the section of the 2007 energy bill that mandates the use of more energy-efficient bulbs. “I’m not opposed to the energy saving bulbs at all,” Barton told the Daily Caller (Sept. 17). “But I say let the consumers make the choice, instead of mandating.”

Our misadventure with light bulbs touted to be more energy efficient is another example of what is known as “technology forcing.” Washington mandates the use of a technology under the assumption that when the mandate goes into effect, the technology will be ready. But if the technology isn’t ready for prime time – and CFLs are not – then consumers suffer. The exercise is all the more absurd when the phase out of a proven product by an unproven one is done in the name of fighting global warming, climate change, climate disruption, or whatever label is used to justify government interference in our lives.

Thomas Edison (1847-1931) is popularly credited with “inventing” the incandescent light bulb. Actually, Edison improved on work others had been performing for three-quarters of a century. But his light bulb, with its carbon filament, made the product commercially viable and so transformed people’s lives forever. Out went the gas light or candle of old, and in came the incandescent light bulb, powered by colorless, smokeless, weightless energy. Edison immediately grasped the importance of his innovation. Shortly before he filed for a patent for his incandescent light bulb in 1879, he said: “We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will buy candles.”

Compare this with the words of presidential candidate Barack Obama in January 2008. He told the San Francisco Chronicle in an interview: “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

The 19th century inventor wanted to make electricity accessible to ordinary people. The 21st century environmental elitist wants to impede that access.

Regulations are controlled by presidential appointees at agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Labor Department, which are part of the executive branch, and at "independent" agencies, such as the National Labor Relations Board, which has quasi-judicial functions.

Tougher regulations lead employers to locate elsewhere. Friendlier regulations draw them back home.

Mr. Obama acknowledged this when, on January 18, 2011, he issued Executive Order 13563, entitled Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review.

Each agency is supposed to make a plan to "periodically review its existing significant regulations to determine whether any such regulations should be modified, streamlined, expanded, or repealed so as to make the agency's regulatory program more effective or less burdensome in achieving the regulatory objectives."

While Mr. Obama knows that burdensome regulations crimp job creation, his agencies continue to interfere with private sector job creation. Here are just a few examples.

The acting general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, Lafe Solomon, wants to stop the Boeing Company, which has a backlog of over 800 Dreamliner aircraft on order, from using its new aircraft manufacturing plant in South Carolina to build Dreamliners.

Mr. Solomon has charged that Boeing's decision to build a new plant at North Charleston, South Carolina, to expand production of its Dreamliner 787, was made in retaliation for strikes at its Everett, Washington plant in 2005 and 2008, even though Boeing has added workers in Washington State since the strikes.

Mr. Solomon's charge was brought in response to a complaint from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which represents Boeing employees in Washington State.

The NLRB's action is sending a job-chilling signal to foreign and domestic companies which might want to locate plants in America. If Boeing had built its new plant in China, the NLRB would lack any authority over it.

Or, take regulations affecting coal, which accounts for 45 percent of American electricity production. The Environmental Protection Agency is developing regulations to restrict coal ash emitted into the atmosphere. It wants to impose tighter standards for nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and other particulates, and new standards for water and carbon. The Agency asserts that these more restrictive limits are necessary to protect public health.

However, EPA states on its Web site that U.S. air quality has been steadily improving since 1980. "Since 1980, nationwide air quality, measured at more than a thousand locations across the country, has improved significantly for all six principal pollutants. These common pollutants are ground-level ozone, particle pollution, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and lead."

To deprive Americans of jobs at this time for the sake of yet cleaner air seems callous indeed. Can't further air improvements wait until the unemployment rate has declined?

And the links between improved air quality and health are unclear. At the same time as air quality has been improving, the incidence of asthma, a disease commonly associated with polluted air, has been increasing. Between 1980 and 2001, as measured air quality was improving, the prevalence of asthma tripled, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Meanwhile, by coincidence or design, the Labor Department has been ratcheting up safety standards for coal miners. EPA regulations will discourage coal from being burned in power plants, but it can be mined and exported. Coal exports are significant, 76 million tons in 2010, 23 percent higher than in 2009.

Proposed Labor Department regulations, if made final, would discourage coal from being produced at all. Over 30 new regulations for coal are on the Labor Department's regulatory agenda.

These regulations discourage coal production, causing unemployment of miners and others in mining communities. Moreover, by making the use of coal more expensive, the government discourages energy-intensive industries, such as manufacturing, from locating in the United States, in effect, encouraging them to flee abroad.

Another proposed Labor Department regulation is affirmative action for women on construction sites. Discrimination is already illegal in the construction industry. In practice, this rule would require construction companies to employ less-qualified women.

With the construction industry still sick from the recession, and women's unemployment rates almost a full percentage point lower than men's, this is not the time to force construction companies to employ women.

Then, consider drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The BP oil spill occurred 15 months ago, and deepwater drilling has yet to resume in the Gulf, although some shallow-water activity has started. The Department of the Interior could approve permits tomorrow and bring back some of the jobs and oil rigs lost to the Gulf states.

With high unemployment in the headlines, it's time to look at some low-cost solutions to spur job growth. How about some simple regulatory reform?

As the UN wrapped up its recent climate conference in Bonn, Germany, talks organizer Christiana Figueres proclaimed that climate change is the “the most important negotiation the world has ever faced.” Faced with real problems – financial meltdowns, unemployment, war and genuine human suffering – the world no longer agrees.

It’s a good thing human productivity doesn’t threaten the global thermostat the way the UN would have us believe. If it were, we’d be cooked. Countries rich and poor are backing away from commitments they made years ago during rosier economic times, before the public became aware of Climategate, renewable energy costs and genuine debate.

The Kyoto Protocol, the only binding international agreement signed since the global warming scare began, expires after 2012. Canada, Russia and Japan have publicly declared they will not renew; China and the United States never signed it; and the US has made it plain it is not about to. And poor countries are becoming less enamored about signing on, as they realize hard economic times mean there will be little climate “mitigation” and “restitution” money coming their way from (formerly) rich countries.

Even die-hard warmists increasingly recognize that bureaucratic solutions hatched at these conferences are rife with waste, fraud and abuse. They may enrich a few, at the expense of everyone else, especially the poor. But they are powerless to control Earth’s climate.

In March, German investigators reported that 850 million Euros disappeared, when shady companies swarmed into carbon trading, emissions and energy businesses. Criminal enterprises raked in tens of millions, fended off regulators with delaying tactics, and then announced bankruptcy or vanished. An Italian sting operation resulted in arrests of wind farm developers who billed the country for subsidies, but never produced a kilowatt of electricity.

London’s liberal Guardian newspaper was aghast to learn that the World Bank’s Biocarbon Fund had arranged to pay European “entrepreneurs” $1 million to establish a system under which 60,000 Kenyans would restrict themselves to farming under rigidly controlled, inefficient, “sustainable” techniques. For that they will receive $1.4 million over 20 years.

That’s right, the beneficent World Bank will enrich more Europeans, so that 60,000 Kenyans can receive $23.83 apiece annually for 20 years of drudgery, poverty and misery: a princely $1.19 a year!

Even the European Union finally understands how little energy deprivation and bureaucratic dictates affect the climate. “It is not enough for the EU to simply sign up for another commitment period,” EU climate representative Jurgen Lefevere admitted. “We only represent 11% of global emissions.”

Burning fossil fuels contributes only a fraction of total annual atmospheric carbon dioxide buildup, and the EU contributes just 11% of that. The EU’s commitment to slashing CO2 emissions by 20% invites corruption, has no control over Chinese or Indian emissions, and has no effect on the climate.

The biggest divide evident in Bonn was between the USA and large emerging economies. Even Obama administration officials who are thoroughly committed to manmade global warming catastrophe claims finally recognize the fraud problem. In Bonn the US insisted that all countries subject their emission reduction claims to verification.

However, China will accept only an agreement that lacks verification – and thereby guarantees the right to cheat. Meanwhile, the Chinese are happy to be “the world’s leader” in manufacturing wind turbines – 95% which they gladly sell to guilt-ridden western countries, while they build a new coal-fired power plant every week.

China and other nations support the notion that prosperous countries owe the world restitution for the “sin” of engaging in the Industrial Revolution and becoming prosperous. We can only hope some nation’s representative will have the courage to remind China and its fellow climate travelers that the West never forced them to spend fifty years mired in Communism, bureaucracy and stagnation.

While it is encouraging that the global warming camp no longer has things entirely its own way, celebration would be premature. For all the gnashing of teeth and complaining about corporate influence we hear from global warming bureaucrats and campaigners, the truth is that today the warmists are the establishment.

Billions are being redistributed to researchers, developing nations, carbon speculators, alternative energy investors and other carbon profiteers – who would like to turn billions into trillions. Pity the poor carbon traders whose markets expire with Kyoto. Not all have their villa in the sun yet.

But rest assured, they will do whatever is necessary to get their villas. Big Warming will not surrender its hold on Western taxpayers without a fight.

The warmist camp plans to retake the initiative at the December UN conference in Durban, South Africa. It intends to turn back the clock to the time when the media would attribute any weather or nature event to global warming, without question or critical examination. Al Gore’s recent Rolling Stone diatribe essentially calls on the media to censure climate disaster skeptics and adopt a one-sided manmade warming narrative.

The New York Times may go along, but the huge and growing alternative media will not. This week’s Washington, DC Heartland Institute international conference of climate alarm skeptics dramatically reinforced the lack of evidence for manmade Armageddon, and the disastrous consequences for poor and industrialized nations alike of staying the current UN course.

Many believe the last-minute appearance by dozens of world leaders crippled the Copenhagen climate conference. But with the big names absent from Cancun and now Bonn, the UN wants them back.

Ms. Figueres capped the Bonn conference with a call for “high-level political attention.” If she succeeds, just imagine the mischief a gathering of Heads of State, foreign ministers, bureaucrats, researchers, green campaigners and carbon profiteers can do at an African beach resort.

Then imagine how nearly impossible it will be to repair the harm they inflict. Action must be taken now to avert such a result.

______________

David Rothbard is president of the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, a Washington, DC-based policy group that works on issues of environment and development. Craig Rucker is CFACT’s executive director.

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Dennis T. Averyhas been quoted in publications ranging from Time and The Washington Post to The Farm Journal. His article, “What's Wrong with Global Warming?” was published in the August 1999 issue of Reader's Digest. With S. Fred Singer, Avery is the coauthor of Unstoppable Global Warming; Every 1500 Years. He travels the world as a speaker, has testified before Congress, and has appeared on most of the nation's major television networks, including a program discussing the bacterial dangers of organic foods on ABC's 20/20. Avery studied agricultural economics at Michigan State University and the University of Wisconsin. He holds awards for outstanding performance from three different government agencies and was awarded the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement in 1983. In addition to lending his expertise to CARE as a member of the Energy Counsel, Dennis Avery currently serves as Director, Center for Global Food Issues and is a Senior Fellow for the Hudson Institute is a non-partisan policy research organization dedicated to innovative research and analysis that promotes global security, prosperity, and freedom.

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Robert L. Bradley, Jr. is one of the nation’s leading experts on the history and regulation of energy and related sustainable development issues. He has presented professional testimony on energy issues to the California Energy Commission and United States Senate; his opinion-page editorials on energy policy have appeared in the New York Times and many other newspapers across the country; his energy views have been aired on National Public Radio, Voice of America, CBS Radio Network, and Armed Forces Radio, as well as local programs. Bradley is a multi-published author whose most widely read book is Energy: the Master Resource (with Richard Fulmer). His newest is Capitalism at Work: Business, Government and Energy. He holds a B.A. in economics, a masters in economics from the University of Houston, and a Ph.D. in political economy from International College. Bradley is a member of the International Association for Energy Economics, the American Economics Association, and the American Historical Association. He is CEO and founder of the Institute for Energy Research in Houston; visiting fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs in London; an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute; and a member of the academic review committee of the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University.

Paul Driessen’scareer has included staff tenures with the United States Senate, Department of the Interior and an energy trade association. He has spoken and written frequently on energy and environmental policy, global climate change, corporate social responsibility, and on marine life associated with oil platforms off the coasts of California and Louisiana. Driessen received his BA in geology and field ecology from Lawrence University, JD from the University of Denver College of Law, and accreditation in public relations from the Public Relations Society of America. A former member of the Sierra Club and Zero Population Growth, he abandoned their cause when he recognized that the environmental movement had become intolerant in its views, inflexible in its demands, unwilling to recognize our tremendous strides in protecting the environment, and insensitive to the needs of billions of people who lack the food, electricity, safe water, healthcare and other basic necessities that we take for granted. Driessen is a senior fellow with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, nonprofit public policy institutes that focus on energy, the environment, economic development and international affairs.

Michael J. Economidesis among America's leading energy analysts who regularly appears on national TV and radio programs. As a consultant, educator, and PhD petroleum engineer, Economides has done technical and managerial work in more than 70 countries. A professor at the Cullen College of Engineering, University of Houston, Economides has written or co-written about 200 articles and peer-reviewed papers and 11 textbooks. Economides is the Editor-in-Chief for the Energy Tribunemagazine. He is also the co-author, with Ron Oligney, of the industry primer, The Color of Oil: The History, the Money and the Politics of the World's Biggest Business, which was published in 2000 and has since been translated into five languages. CARE is honored to include Michael Economides as a member of the Energy Counsel.

Michael R. Fox, Ph.D., is a retired nuclear scientist and university chemistry professor. He is the science and energy writer/reporter for the HawaiiReport.com. A resident of Kaneohe, Hawaii, he has nearly 40 years experience in the energy field. His interests and activities in the communications of science, energy, and the environment has led to several communications awards, hundreds of speeches, and many appearances on television and talk shows. Dr. Fox is listed by the Heartland Institute as a global warming/climate change expert. He is also the Senior Fellow for Science at the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. He can be reached via email at mfox@grassrootinstitute.org. Please visit Dr. Mike Fox's blog at http://www.foxreport.org/.

Byron King is the resident energy and natural resource expert at Agora Financial, LLC. A geologist by training, he worked for the former Gulf Oil Company and has followed oil industry developments for over 30 years. Byron’s career path also took him into the U.S. Navy, both active duty and reserve. In the 1990s and 2000s Byron engaged in a vigorous private law practice. For the past five years Byron has been writing about energy and natural resource issues for an international audience. Currently, Byron writes and edits two major publications, Outstanding Investments and Energy and Scarcity Investor. Byron holds degrees from Harvard, the U.S. Naval War College and the University of Pittsburgh.

Tom Tanton is the Principal of T2 & Associates, a firm providing consulting services to the energy and technology industries. Mr. Tanton has over 35 years experience in the energy, economy, and environmental fields.